McLaren work overtime to cover F1-IndyCar double dose in Bahrain and Long Beach
April 12 was an important date for McLaren racing operations as its various racing divisions participated in the F1 and IndyCar qualifying, while the Formula E team was busy in the Miami E-Prix. Revealing how intense workloads get during such race weekends, Arrow McLaren team principal Tony Kanaan explained how the British team adapts when the F1 and IndyCar worlds collide.
Having F1 and IndyCar races on the same weekend is quite common. The last IndyCar race at Thermal Club saw the British team's Pato O'Ward and Christian Lundgaard start on the front row, while the Woking-based squad started the Chinese Grand Prix in first and third.
With McLaren having its headquarters in Woking, UK, all of its motorsport division coordinates with Mission Control back at MTC. As McLaren's trio in the IndyCar realm suffered a subpar qualifying, its drivers were out in Round 2 and were unable to make it into the Fast Six.
This blew apart the strategy window, and the team coordinated with Mission Control, all while they also catered to the needs of the F1 division at the same time. Tony Kanaan explained how the process goes by and said (via X/@marshallpruett):
"So, for us, Arrow McLaren, we have the group in the UK, at mission control. They are sending us information. We are going to meet, regroup with the team now to discuss about [the] possibilities of strategy. What do we need to do? What tires we're going to start [on]? What's the plan for warmup?" (3:00 onwards)
"When we wake up in the morning, we have all the information. The secret is... how much time we had with all the information because we have so many capable people that I think we ran physically out of daytime... And a lot of people don't know this, at the same time, inside Mission Control in the UK, we have another 22 engineers working on the Bahrain [Grand Prix] with the team," he added.
Though Arrow McLaren's outing in IndyCar did not uphold the team's expectations, the same cannot be said for the F1 team.
How are McLaren's IndyCar and F1 efforts panning out?
Pato O'Ward qualified ninth for the Long Beach Grand Prix, while his teammates, Nolan Siegel, qualified 11th, and Christian Lundgaard 12th, after crashing in Round 2. This left the team's star driver bummed out, but the English team had a better day on the F1 side of things.
Oscar Piastri claimed his second career pole position at the Bahrain International Circuit. The papaya pair seemed to be the fastest drivers on the track, but Lando Norris had a torrid final run in Q3 and qualified sixth for the race.
So, the F1 team will be hoping to add another victory under its belt, while the IndyCar squad will supposedly be in damage limitation mode.